Welcome back to Drilled I'm Amy Westervalt. This month we're re-releasing season one of

Drilled about the origins of climate denial because a new peer-reviewed study in the journal

Science has just been published and it shows that scientists working for Exxon in the 1970s

in the 1980s predicted climate change the exact changes we're seeing today with alarming

accuracy. I spoke with the lead author of that study Jeffrey Superan about how the data

in this study seems to be landing with both the media and the public differently than some

previous studies.

I was just talking about that the other day because someone was like what would be most

helpful to show my climate denial uncle that was like one of those conversations.

And well there's two things one I did this season of Drilled on the crab fish or

mobs wound up suing and and it was so striking to me that half of the people in the group

of plaintiffs still didn't quote unquote believe climate change you know and and that the

thing that had convinced them to sign on to this lawsuit was that was a fairness issue

just to access to information right what it likes to be like to right and like yeah everyone

having access to the same information with which to make decisions and I think this falls

into that camp too it's very compelling for people to have you know primary documents

from within the company itself so not anybody else's take or anything and not even an interview

with the scientist who is doing this information although I do think like that those help

to to hear from the scientists themselves yes yes we were doing this research and yes

we knew about this stuff and all of that that is helpful too but I think you know being

able to give people source documents that show without any doubt that yes they absolutely

had this information and chose to act on it in this way it's helpful actually for people

...